A Different Tale
by JustDance04
Summary: In which Jeremie Belpois never discovered the supercomputer, but it didn't remain hidden. Different Lyoko Warriors. Different story.
1. Jeremie

Jeremie Belpois didn't really have friends. Everyone assumed he was too busy or considered himself above the 'average people' with his genius intellect and tendency to stay in his room and program things. He didn't mind, though. Really, he didn't need friends.

Even less so than friends, however... romance was pushed to the side. There were jokes that he was in a committed relationship with his computer and he just shrugged them off. Romance was a silly idea and it was only junior high. There would be plenty of time after he had his life in order.

But when that new girl transferred in ( _"Class, this is Aelita White, Milly's cousin from America."_ ), he thought, for the first time, that maybe it wasn't such a silly idea.

Still, girls weren't his area of expertise and it wasn't likely that she was going to speak to him anytime soon. She was always hanging around with Milly, Tamiya, Emilie, and Matthias ( _nobody knew how the two older students suddenly became best friends with the seventh-graders_ ) and rarely spoke to others. The five were an odd group, always cutting class and running off to some strange place ( _always saving the world, but he never gets the chance to remember_ ). They stuck to each other like some sort of pack.

It wasn't his place to question ( _it never stopped anyone from doing so_ ), which is why he never bothered to ask. He wasn't going to initiate conversation. They wouldn't want him.

Not until the day he runs into Aelita, quite literally, in the hallway, falling to the ground and dropping his box of robot parts everywhere, stammering out an apology. She smiles and helps him pick it up, then asks what he's using the parts for. He starts explaining in a very thorough and scientific manner, before stopping himself because nobody understood.

Her smile grows and she starts asking questions in the same way ( _'geek speak, language of the geeks' is what Della Robbia from down the hall calls it_ ). She ends up helping him work on them, praising what he's done and he's blushing because nobody understands what he does this way and the light from the window catches her pink hair and green eyes, causing them to glow.

They're interrupted by a phone call from Emilie. He doesn't know what's said, but she grows wide-eyed before apologizing to him and getting up to run off somewhere and as he watches her retreating back, he thinks that maybe, for the first time in his life, he has a crush.


	2. Ulrich

Ulrich Stern, attractive star soccer player with a cool exterior. It was no surprise most girls in school would jump on the chance to go out with him, but he never really cared much. Only two girls had ever caught his attention: the girl who he took Pencak Silat with, who seemed to have no friends except for William Dunbar, and Emilie LeDuc, the odd girl who always had her nose buried in some book, usually about programming.

It was, in everyone's opinion, strange. While Emilie had always been good with computers and enjoyed using them, she never obsessed over them until she became best friends with Milly, Tamiya, and Matthias Burrell. After that, they suddenly seemed to be her top priority in life, which was probably why she never seemed to display much interest in romance. Still, from the conversations she'd had with Ulrich, it was clear to anyone watching that she liked him. The same couldn't be said for many other boys at Kadic.

Which made it confusing for the soccer player when his walk across the courtyard was interrupted by a screech of "FOR THE LAST TIME! I! DID NOT! KISS! JEREMIE! BELPOIS!"

Looking over his shoulder, he spotted a very frustrated Emilie in an argument with her friend, Aelita White, who seemed to be mad... probably because Emilie apparently kissed Jeremie Belpois and it was a known fact to everyone on campus that the two nerds had quickly fallen head over heels for each other. Darting his eyes around, Ulrich spotted the boy in question, who seemed to be trying to bury himself in his turtleneck. _Poor guy's probably never been kissed in his life. This has to be awkward for him._

Not being the gossipy type, he shrugged it off and kept walking. With his luck, Odd would probably know all about it and rattle off all the details to him in the dorm later that night. His roommate had to be the most gossipy person in the entire school, beating out Milly and Tamiya since they had stopped printing the school newspaper on any kind of _regular_ schedule.

Trying to push the odd incident off, it wasn't until hours later that Emilie sat next to him on one of the benches in the courtyard. "So, uh... I don't know if you heard about what I apparently did today..." she started.

"You mean kissing Belpois? Because I heard you screaming about it across the courtyard."

"I- yeah, that... because I _totally_ didn't. The whole thing was a huge misunderstanding. I would never hurt Aelita like that." The bespectacled girl seemed awkward. "There's a perfectly logical explanation."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"... I- never mind. I don't know why I'm even talking to you about this." She muttered something under her breath. All Ulrich caught was something about jealousy and... specters? "Look... I have to... go work on my programs. It's, uh, very important."

"Oh. Uh... see you around, then?"

Standing up, Emilie gave a nervous grin. "Yeah... see you... around."

Watching her retreating back, all Ulrich could think was that she was definitely hiding something. Before he could continue down that train of thought, he was interrupted - for the second time that day – by yelling.

"Hey, Ulrich! Come look! Aelita White kissed Jeremie Belpois and he's been standing in the same spot ever since!"

"GO AWAY, ODD."

"You're no fun."


	3. William and Yumi

"We need a third member for the project," Yumi sighed. "Seems like everyone's taken, though."

"Not everyone," was William's response. Pointing to the other side of the room, where a kid in glasses and an orange shirt stood, he continued, "Looks like Matthias Burrell doesn't have any partners."

Of course he had no partners. All his friends were in the grades below them. The two looked at each other shrugged, before silently waving at the boy. Noticing them, he trotted over.

"Let me guess. You noticed I had no partners and you only have two of the required three?" he asked, before either of the others said anything. With a nod of affirmation as his answer, Matthias pulled a chair over and sat down.

For the next several days, the trio worked on their science project together. It was a struggle, to say the least. William had never exactly been a star pupil and Matthias, though dedicated when he was around, had a tendency to run off at a single phone call or text from one of his friends.

(They followed him to the supercomputer once together, then Yumi followed him on her own later. Neither of these incidents were remembered by either teen.)

They took to working on it during lunch, since it was when they were best guaranteed to all be there.

While William hadn't been the most helpful with research, getting the drawings and diagrams done seemed to be easy for him. At the very least, he was a better artist than Yumi or Matthias. Leaving him to draw, the other two worked on the actual report that they would read to the class.

It was an odd sort of comfort. They talked about the project and they talked about things going on in the school. Matthias always seemed to deflect questions about his friends, but the others just shrugged it off and kept talking.

Despite the setbacks, they got the project done in time. Yumi held the belief that they could have done better, but they still managed to get a B-. An average grade for the girl who always scored well, since she didn't really have anything to distract her. A decent grade for the boy who could potentially be brilliant if he wasn't too lazy to apply himself. An amazing grade for the boy who almost never finished his homework or got all his studying done, because he was too busy running off to a computer lab in an old abandoned factory.

The day after it was turned in, Matthias went back to sitting with his friends, talking in hushed tones about the secret that bound them together. While William and Yumi had gotten used to the presence of a third person at their table, it wasn't hard to adjust back to just the two of them.

Matthias and his friends had all been sort of strange, after all. No reason to assume one science project would change that.


End file.
